11.-13.9.2019 Venezia / Venice Art Biennale 2019

11 May – 24 Nov 2019, La Biennale di Venezia: “May you live in interesting times”, www.labiennale.org. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biennale_di_Venezia: internationale Kunstausstellung in Venedig … seit 1895 zweijährlich … die älteste Biennale …

The Venice Art Bienale 2019 is divided into two proposals: (i) Proposta (proposal) A, at the Arsenale, (ii) Proposta B, in the Giardini’s Central Pavilion (Padiglione Centrale). In addition, there are National pavilions, etc.

2019_09_13 Venezia (I): Biennale, Giardini

2019_09_12 Venezia (I), unbekannte(r) KünstlerIn

2019_09_12 Venezia (I): Architecture Biennale 2016, Prototype Droneport Shell

2019_09_12 Venezia (I), Weg zum Arsenale

2019_09_11 Venezia (I), Giardini

2019_09_11 Venezia (I): Biennale, Deutscher Pavillon

Proposta A, at the Arsenale, Central Pavilion – Sample exhibits:

• Shilpa Gupta (Mumbai, India): For in your tongue, I cannot fit. Installazione sonora con cento altoparlanti, microfoni, testi stampati e leggii di metallo / Sound Installation with 100 speakers, microphones, printed text and metal stands, 2017-18. labiennale.org/en/art/2019/partecipants/shilpa-gupta: … works around the physical and ideological existence of boundaries, revealing their simultaneously arbitrary and repressive functions. Her practice draws on the interstitial zones between nation states, ethno-religious divides and structures of surveillance … – http://shilpagupta.com/for-in-your-tongue-i-cannot-fit-audio/. “… addresses the violence of censorship through a symphony of recorded voices which speak or sing the verses of 100 poets imprisoned for their work or political positions, from the 7^th century to the present day … a grid of 100 microphones … reverse-wired to function as speakers. The recitations in multiple languages … create a soundscape … chorus of disembodied voices.”. – Sample text: Anna Barkova (detained 1934, 1947, 1957): “It betrayed our hopes, it mocked our love, it promised us victories and gave us new despots”. Vgl. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Barkova: А́нна Алекса́ндровна Барко́ва… 1901-1976 … a Soviet poet, journalist, playwright, essayist, memoirist, and writer of fiction … imprisoned for more than 20 years in the Gulag …
• Hito Steyerl (Berlin): This is the Future (2019). Videoinstallazione, ambiente / Video installation, environment. Part 1: This is the Future (2019). Video HD a singolo canale, colori, sonoro, 16’ / single channel HD video, color, sound, 16’, part 2: Power Plants: Video HD a 8 canali, colori, sonoro, in loop / 8 channel HD video, color, sound, looped. Ambiente … Graphic design, Tipografia … Camera … Voce fuoricampo / Voice over … Metraggio di Chemnitz / Chemnitz footage … Algoritmo di previsione futura .. / Initial future prediction algorithm … Sistema video neurale / Neural video system … In This is the Future una donna decide di ritrovare un giardino che aveva dovuto nascondere nel futuro per proteteggerlo… / In This is the Future a woman sets out to find a garden that she had to hide in the future in order to protect it … digital flowers that bud, bloom and wither – yet never come into existence … The garden is lost in the future …Steyerl raises questions about the role AI will play in our lives. – labiennale.org/en/art/2019/partecipants/hito-steyerl: At a time when the art world wonders at the first “artworks” produced by artificial intelligence and legitimises their status in the art market, … Steyerl questions AI’s applications … large corporations, often in tandem with the military industry, develop these technologies following their own economic interests …. Following the trail of writers such as Jules Verne … also referring to the work of Leonardo da Vinci, Steyerl is a harbinger of a future that she invites us to ponder.
• Philippine Pavilion, Mark Justiniani: Island Weather. Commissioner: National Commission for Culture and the Arts, Department of Foreign Affairs. – “Images of the earth beamed by the Apollo spacecraft from its 1968 and 1972 missions are instrumental to our concepts of the world as whole and as one. These pictorial representations shape our understandings of the world as interconnected … ‘an oceanic globalism … an interconnection and shared vulnerability’ … we relentlessly face the threats of displacement, discrimination, and disasters … Manila the watchtower for typhoons from the West Pacific … Justiniani’s work … a gaze that burrows into appearances. A darkened room reveals a realm underlying a world of familiar outlines … the body … walks on glass, a material gtiven to breaking …”. – labiennale.org/en/art/2019/national-participations/philippines: Islands are at the core of this art project as it puts forward new imaginaries of places and their histories. The project is an immersive environment that simulates a voyage … A trail across the Philippine archipelago … refracting history by way of beguiling forms … aims to deepen our conversations about ways of seeing and the manner of perception, the nature of space, and the constructs of time.
• Malta Pavilion; Vince Briffa, Klitsa Antoniou, Trevor Borg: Maleth / Haven / Port – Heterotopias of Evocation. Commissioner: Arts Council Malta. – “… ‘heterotopias’ as such, how can they be described? … a sort of simultaneously mythic and real contestation of the space in which we live … Michel Foucault, Des Espaces Autres … The Phoenician word “Maleth” evokes the primeval origins of the island’s existence and … translates to Haven/ Port … Open to diverse readings and drawing from the tri-fold of histories, mythologies and expectations, the exhibition aims to create within the space a topos of artistic conversation … inviting the audience to reflect on their own lifetime journey. – labiennale.org/en/art/2019/national-participations/malta: … inspired by the Odyssey … provides an immersive reinterpretation of our timeless need to seek a Haven (Maleth). Cave of Darkness – Port of No Return. Trevor Borg … Outland. Vince Briffa … Atlantropa X. Klitsa Antoniou … – www.artscouncilmalta.org/pages/the-council/our-strategy/internationalisation/malta-pavilion-at-the-biennale-arte-2019: Trevor Borg’s work … Cave of Darkness– Port of No Return proposes a re-imagined multilayered narrative of ancient creatures and long lost civilizations, exploring entrapment concealed within a Haven. Drawing from animal remains and artifacts excavated in a cave in Malta the work seeks to make (up) histories and to fabricate realities and semblances.

Proposta B, in the Giardini’s Central Pavilion (Padiglione Centrale) – Sample exhibits:

• Lara Favaretto (Turin), 2017-2019: Thinking Head. Acqua pura, ugelli ultrasottili per vapore, tubi e canne per fumo, idrovore, telecomando / Pure water, ultra fine mist nozzles, fog pipes and hoses, pump stations, remote control. From the description: “… mirrors the functioning of the human brain … Central Pavilon … a constant mist obscures its façade … … In a far less visible part …, the artist and a group of thinkers … periodically gather .. for clandestine discussions …”. – labiennale.org/en/art/2019/partecipants/lara-favaretto: Lara Favaretto’s multifaceted art practice encompasses sculpture, installation, and performative action, and is often expressed through black humour and irreverence …
• Andreas Lolis (Albania / Athens, 2018): Untitled. Marmo / Marble. From the description: “Andreas Lolis creates tromp l’oeil objects in marble that mimic ephemeral objects …By reproducing detritus in a high-classical medium, he troubles conventional systems of value and status …”. – labiennale.org/en/art/2019/partecipants/andreas-lolis: Lolis, who has worked solely with marble across his career, has described his relationship with the material as devotional. His intense attention to detail means that each life-size object is able to trick the eye almost entirely.
• Antoine Catala, It’s Over (2019). labiennale.org/en/art/2019/partecipants/antoine-catala: … creates new and playful relations between language and realit … seeks to unearth some of the ways in which meaning is transmitted via words, signs, texts, emojis … At the entrance of the Central Pavilion nine large panels covered in coloured silicone … As the air is … pumped out from each panel, embossed text is revealed, transmitting ambiguously reassuring messages: … “It’s over” … “Tutto va bene” … or an image of two teddy bears kissing.
• Sun Yuan and Peng Yu: Can’t help myself. labiennale.org/en/art/2019/partecipants/sun-yuan-and-peng-yu%C2%A0: … Nearly all of Sun Yuan and Peng Yu’s installations are bent on soliciting wonders and tension from spectators. The act of looking … on the part of audience members is a constitutive element of their recent works, which often involve the staging of intimidating spectacles. – www.inexhibit.com/case-studies/the-giardini-exhibition-58th-venice-art-biennale-2019/: … anthropomorphic industrial robot programmed to execute 32 complex movements … moves nimbly within its fenced room, revolves, and extends its arm to … collect obsessively a red fluid continuously flowing on the floor … for the artists, the liquid is a metaphor of the art that refuses to be … pigeonholed … originally created for the exhibition “Tales of Our Time” at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Additional exhibits:

• Giardini, Deutscher Pavillon – Natascha Süder Happelmann [Multimedia artwork – (Meta-)Klangkomposition]. Commissioner: Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (ifa) on behalf of the Federal Foreign Office, Germany. labiennale.org/en/art/2019/national-participations/germany: … Süder Happelmann has used a collaborative process to develop a multimedia artwork … Together, architectural elements, sound, sculptures, and installations create a space that makes the economic, political, and social conflicts of the present day physically tangible … main concepts … containment, isolation, and accumulation … the work continues in the form of publications, concerts, radio broadcasts, and lectures … [Akustische Installation: Überlagung mehrerer zyklischer Tonspuren -> dauerhaft wechselnde Klangresultate] – Vgl. https://deutscher-pavillon.org/beteiligte/.
• Stadtdistrikt Castello, Calle Nuova – Rifondazione Comunista (Partito Comunista Rifondazione), mit Jesus-Schrein, rifondazione.it; kein Eintrag in Biennale-Website aufzufinden
• Giudecca, Spazio Punch, Iceland Pavilion – Hrafnhildur Arnardóttir / Shoplifter: Chromo Sapiens, labiennale.org/en/art/2019/national-participations/iceland: … she uses her personally developed textile techniques, a manipulation of her signature medium, synthetic hair … a labyrinthine journey through cavernous chambers … The texture resembles plant-like overgrowth …
• [At the Arsenal, from Venice Architecture Biennale 2016] Norman Foster Foundation – Lord Foster of Thames Bank OM [Order of Merit], con / with Future Africa EPFL [L’Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne] … Ochsendorf, Dejong & Block … Block Research Group, ETH Zürich: Prototype Droneport Shell. Hierzu Jessica Mairs (27.5.2016): Norman Foster reveals vaulted Droneport prototype at Venice Architecture Biennale (dezeen.com/2016/05/27/norman-foster-partners-vaulted-drone-port-prototype-medical-supplies-remote-africa-venice-architecture-biennale/). “… unveiled the first full-scale prototype of its Droneport concept … The structure is the inaugural project from the Norman Foster Foundation, set up by the British architect to anticipate technological advances in the field … and encourage a more ‘holistic’ view of architecture … made up from two layers of a new type of compressed earth blocks called Durabric, developed by the LafargeHolcim Foundation for sustainable construction with researchers at … ETH in Zurich … Its pilot project is to be launched this year in Rwanda and completed by 2020, and [the] firm’s ambition is that every small town in Africa will have its own drone port by 2030 … While the primary objective is to transport medical supplies such as blood, there are also plans to establish a cargo network … also exploring how a solar-powered building material developed by artist Olafur Eliasson, called SolarBrick, could be 3D printed in future drone ports.